October 2014 – HEALTH – Despite several confident exclamations from officials that the Ebola pandemic is contained, there are more and more reports of possible or confirmed infections. Several nations are admitting to have Ebola-symptomatic cases or that they are bringing infected patients back from Africa for treatment. New reports of possible infections are coming from Australia, Turkey, Brazil and France. Furthermore, health officials in Germany confirmed that a 3rd infected patient arrived into the country. Bloomberg is reporting that a nurse, Sue-Ellen Kovack, who returned from volunteering in Africa, has developed Ebola-like symptoms. Kovack treated the infected patients with the Red Cross in Sierra Leone and after she developed a low-grade fever, she was hospitalized in Australia. She is being tested for Ebola and this means that Australia now has its first potential case of the deadly disease. Even though several people and officials say that the Nigeria’s outbreak is over, a Turkish worker has been hospitalized in Istanbul, after he started showing signs of high fever and diarrhea.

The 46-year-old man, whose identity has not been revealed yet, returned from Africa 11 days ago to see his family during the Feast of the Sacrifice holiday. After a Nigerian woman was tested negative in mid-August, this is now the second case of a suspected Ebola patient in Turkey. Health officials from Germany confirmed that a 3rd infected patient arrived into the country on Thursday. The man, who comes from Sudan, contracted the disease in Liberia and he has been transported from the airport to the St. Georg Clinic in Leipzig, which is located about 125 miles (200 kilometers) southeast of Berlin. Two other Ebola patients in Germany were also flown back from Africa and a World Health Organization (WHO) employee, who had fallen ill with the hemorrhagic fever in Sierra Leone, was successfully stabilized and released from the hospital last week. Fears are also growing in Brazil, since a possible Ebola patient was flown in an air force plane from Parana to the National Infectious Disease Institute in Rio de Janeiro on Friday morning. The possible infected patient, who is still being tested for the deadly virus, is a 47-year-old man from Guinea, one of the African countries that has been highly affected by the disease. In case that he comes back positive, this would mean that the virus has spread to South America for the first time.

France also reported about a possible infected person, since an unidentified woman from Paris has been placed in sterilized isolation after showing Ebola-like symptoms. Despite all efforts to contain this deadly virus, there are several new reports of its spreading. Ebola case was already confirmed in Senegal, Spain and in the United States. The first person that was diagnosed with the virus in the U.S., was Tomas Duncan, who died on Wednesday morning in the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. Just like the nurse from Spain, Duncan also went untreated and un-quarantined for a week, despite reporting his symptoms. It looks like the world is ill-prepared for the possible global Ebola pandemic. –Guardian

Sue Ellen Kovack has now been cleared of having Ebola. She did exactly the right thing. She was asymptomatic when she came home to Australia, but as she is a well-trained and professional nurse, she isolated herself from every body and monitored her condition. She was more than thorough in protecting her community from the possibility of infection. The only reason she suspected that she might be infected was because she developed a low-grade fever, but no other signs or symptoms. She contacted the health authorities who rightly put her under medical care, still isolated, until they could be sure that the cause of the fever was not Ebola infection. She only remains in hospital now until she can have a diagnosis of the cause of her fever, but there are a multitude of reasons why that occurred, including just being run-down.

Isn’t it great that our countries hospitals and hospitals in other civilized countries are ready to handle this? Interesting how U.S. and Spain made exactly the same mistakes. This is ridiculous!!! Hmmmm, 2 possible Ebola patients are transported by ambulance, (in two different countries) and are put in quarantine at each hospital, then the ambulance stays in service, transporting other patients without being decontaminated for 12 hours in Spain and also some length of time in the States. Of course after both patients were falsely diagnosed and released from emergency rooms days to a week before being quarantined!!!! Why identical mistakes? This makes me so angry!
So it begins

The ambulance would have changed the linen and cleaned the stretchers after the delivery of the patients. If the patients were bleeding or diarrhoea-ing, that would have resulted in a full decontamination of the patient transport unit. Universal precautions are standard practice, and are conducted routinely in developed countries. In dealing with any patient, there is no assumption that the patient is free of infection. Every patient is treated as potentially contagious. There would be no risk of cross infection in the ambulance or the hospital.